Strength in numbers

Peggy Peattie

Mexican Congresswoman Rosi Orozco comforts one of the women rescued from the human trafficking circuit, on an evening when several of the women were over at Orozco's home. Orozco's term in congress is expiring, but she is continuing the mission, as "pres

Mexican Congresswoman Rosi Orozco comforts one of the women rescued from the human trafficking circuit, on an evening when several of the women were over at Orozco's home. Orozco's term in congress is expiring, but she is continuing the mission, as "pres (Peggy Peattie)

An Inhumane Trade

Editor’s note: This package of stories, photos and video is a joint project between U-T San Diego and the International Center for Journalists, which provided funding from the Ford Foundation and the Brooks and Joan Fortune Family Foundation.

Mexico City -

After decades of free-flowing trafficking of sex and labor slaves in Mexico, a small but growing league of men and women across the country have undertaken the Sisyphean task of fighting back.

Doing so is not without peril.

Activists who have spoken out have been threatened. Law-enforcement officials who stood up to traffickers have been killed. Some journalists who have spotlighted the crime have lost their lives or faced threats so dire they have fled the country.

Mexico is equal parts destination, gateway to the U.S. and supplier to the rest of the world in terms of human trafficking. The country’s high rate of poverty, lack of education for all and lawlessness that has gripped it for years has created a fertile ground for kidnappings as well as wooing men and women with promises of good jobs or romancing teenagers with pledges of love. Regardless of how they were taken, victims eventually find themselves sold for sex or toiling to pay off high debt — abused, beaten and threatened with violence.

“If we don’t do anything, it will be the biggest crime in the world,” said Rosi Orozco, a former congresswoman and founder of a new nonprofit group focused on combatting human trafficking.

International and national human-rights groups estimate that Mexico has 70,000 to 100,000 sex-trafficking victims at any given time and that about 70 percent are underage, said Cuauhtémoc Ibarra, who oversaw the Special Commission Against Human Trafficking in Mexico City until August. The number of labor-trafficking victims is estimated to be much higher because they are less likely to report abuses and because no one is specifically looking for them, experts said.

U.S. State Department Ambassador-at-Large Luis CdeBaca said the gathering of anti-trafficking forces in Mexico is a welcome sight. He leads the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons.

“It used to be that one person here or one person there would carry the issue, but if they were killed, the movement was stalled or drastically set back,” he said. “We are now seeing the beginning of consensus against human trafficking started in Mexico. There has been a recognition that traffickers are preying on people.”

Last year, the Mexican government gave 4 million pesos — about $300,000 — to the effort, which advocates said is not enough.

Studies are underway in Mexico to try to estimate the depth and breadth of human trafficking, to provide more preventive education and to push for more prosecutions.

There is still much work to be done, experts said. Education and awareness are just getting geared up in some places, and not all state governments are on board with the fight. It’s unclear who is associated with the traffickers, and the number of investigations has been lagging far behind the number of reported trafficking crimes.

A 2009 American Bar Association report on trafficking in Mexico found there were more than 47 criminal groups in the business of human trafficking, including those who also run drugs and guns.

“When you sell drugs, you sell it and it’s gone. With a girl, you can sell her 30 or 50 times a day for five years,” said Teresa Ulloa, director of the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women in Mexico, Latin America and the Caribbean.

Mexico’s hot spots for human trafficking include Puebla, Mexico City and Tijuana, which Orozco once called the “Bangkok of the West.” Its red-light district, called Coahuila, is well-known for its cross-border sex tourist appeal. Girls stand outside of hotels and strip clubs waiting for clients while young women dance inside.

In Mexico City’s La Merced area, young men on motorbikes and on foot patrol the areas where young women in short skirts are on sale. It is a popular outdoor marketplace where bargain shoppers can purchase balloon superheroes, stock up on packages of white tube socks or pick out a prostitute. The women stand out in the open day and night.

Across the city on Sullivan Street, near the capitol’s business center, the women come out after dark. They stand on the edge of the curb in stilletos as cars drive by slowly and motorists negotiate for a “date” at a nearby hotel.

One former victim, Caro, said nearly all the women on this stretch are trafficked. After more than two years of servicing 30 to 40 clients a night, she ran away when her trafficker threatened to take her to the United States.

Caro made her way to the shelter Orozco helped establish. Last month, she began college.

Orozco, whose term ended last month, is one of the most outspoken voices in the trafficking fight. She led the push for an anti-trafficking law that passed in 2007, and she helped create the safehouse for victims.

Joining her is a growing cast of allies that includes a couple who house victims in Mexico City, attorneys general in a handful of states including Puebla, where sex trafficking is rampant, and other advocates across the country.

Nelly Montealegre Diaz heads Mexico’s Attorney General’s Specialized Prosecutorial Unit for Violent Crimes Against Women and Human Trafficking, known as Fevimtra. Fevimtra was created in 2008 and that year Montealegre’s office investigated 127 cases. Last year there were 295, and so far this year the figure has exceed more than 140.

She is starting a database to collect information about all the missing children in Mexico, which is in the tens of thousands, and is focused on sending more traffickers to prison.

Young Mexicans are also speaking out. One of the most prolific anti-trafficking voices on social media is 22-year-old college student Areli Rojas, whose twitter handle is @barbieroja.

“It seems that it happens because we are all susceptible,” she said “I put myself in the shoes of the victims and it must be eradicated.”

In neighboring Puebla, which is inundated by the criminal operatives from Tlaxcala and around the country, the governor and his cabinet have pledged resources, created a special office to address the issue and hired experts like Mariana Wenzel. She is a Puebla native who has spent time in the Philippines, Africa and Ukraine working on trafficking issues.

“It is important because it violates human beings,” said Lieutenant Gov. Fernando Manzanilla. “The other crimes are important too, but this is slavery.”